


taste your beating heart

by spiekiel



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, M/M, Marking, Pack Feels, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness, Scent Marking, Werewolves, team enterprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 06:30:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2497979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiekiel/pseuds/spiekiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5 times Jim marked Bones as his + 1 time Bones marked Jim</p><p>{a werewolf au}</p>
            </blockquote>





	taste your beating heart

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [【翻译】Taste Your Beating Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7189415) by [炏燚 (kait)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kait/pseuds/%E7%82%8F%E7%87%9A)



 

I.

 

A branch snaps against Leo's cheek as he hits the cover of the trees full-tilt, and his feet are a clumsy jumble in the underbrush, but he keeps going, because he's insane.He's insane, and he's running through the woods in the darkest hour of the night with a pack of scaly green bastards on his heels because he was an idiot enough to check on a damn staged accident on the side of the road, an idiot enough in the first place to sew Jim Kirk up two years ago when he showed up at his clinic bleeding with a large-bore rifle wound - 

 

He trips up a steep embankment, toes and knees sliding on wet leaves, elbows in the cold dirt, and the screeching sounds of the lizard things echo in the preserve all around him, quieter still than the rush of blood and the pounding of his own heart in his ears.His momentum sends him rolling down the other side, limbs in a tangle, and they must be gaining, they're too much faster than him to be very far behind, it's a miracle he's gotten this far - 

 

Howls pierce the crisp night air, and Leo at the bottom of a ditch on his side feels them like a shock of warmth through his system, a thrumming in the particles of air themselves that liquifies the rigid seize of his chest. 

 

He hears crashing through the woods around him, the quick patter of paws on the saturated ground.He hears big animals breathing heavy, growling on the exhale, and the scaly bastards' screeching is getting closer and closer, on every side of him.His eyes are blown wide, but he can't see a damn thing, the waxing moon isn't bright enough with the heavy tree cover, and the best place for him is probably as far away from the clash as he can get - 

 

Leo pushes himself up onto his feet, and his ankle screams in protest, he's willing to bet it won't support him up the other side of the embankment, will probably send him sprawling on his face.He takes a shaky step forward, the hairs on the back on end, and - 

 

A weight like a meteorite hits him from the side, taking him back to the ground in a flash of gold fur and bared teeth, and Leo feels his breath leave him in a punch.The wolf lands mostly next to him, one paw over his chest, claws pricking his chest through his shirt, and Leo tries to roll out from underneath him, kneeing at the wolf's ribs.

 

"What the hell, Jim - "

 

The wolf scrambles on top of him, smearing mud across Leo's clothes,and Leo tries to bat his head away, but he's too fast for him with those damn superhuman reflexes - 

 

Leo feels the wolf's teeth sink gently, slowly into the tendon where his neck meets his shoulder, and he can't do anything but strain fruitlessly under the wolf's heavy weight, curse vehemently at the entire goddamn situation.He glares up at the pitch blackness and yanks as hard as he can at the fur at the back of the wolf's head, feels him breathe out wetly against Leo's ear with a soft growl - 

 

"Jim!" a sharp, human voice cracks out over the white noise of fighting surrounding them.The wolf climbs off of Leo and takes off up the embankment, falls in at Spock's side, his shoulders tall as Spock's chest; the wolf disappears into the night with a final snarl that's ten thousand times more threatening than the AK balanced on Spock's hip. 

 

Spock lingers at the top of the steep slope for a moment that seems longer than it probably is, staring down at Leo, and Leo can't do anything but breathe heavy against the batter of his double-time heart in his chest, against the quiet burn of the bite on his shoulder and jarble of his panicked brain.Finally, Spock turns and disappears, and the sound of gunfire joins the howling, the screeching.

 

***

 

"Damnit Jim, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

 

Leo drops his arm from around Scotty's shoulders and forces his way across the kitchen on one foot by sheer force of chutzpah, slams Jim back against the counter with a hand fisted in the front of his tattered shirt.He's seeing a very confusing combination of bright blue eyes and a goddamn haze of red, because - 

 

"You bit me!" the adrenaline from the fight has worn off, but there's a whole new storm of furious energy pumping its way through Leo's veins, and the thwapping of Jim's strong heart under his hands is gratifying.

 

"Bones," Jim tries to say.

 

"You bit him?" it's Gaila, standing in the doorway next to Scotty, and Leo doesn't know why she needs to be here when the entire pack can hear them anyway, as long as they're all gathered upstairs."Jimmy, why?"

 

Leo's hands tighten in what's left of Jim's shirt, and he waits for the answer, shoulder twinging with every breath under the field dressing that used to be the bottom hem of his favorite grey tee shirt.Instead of answering, Jim shoves him off, makes Leo step back on his bad ankle and collapse sideways into the refridgerator. 

 

"Those things were hunting you, Bones," Jim says, and he's still got some wolf in his voice, a growl stuck in his chest that vibrates through his words."I had to make sure they knew you were pack.You're ours, and they were in our territory.They had no right to be here, and they had no fucking right to be chasing you."

 

Leo's balancing himself with his elbow against the fridge door, the paper of one of Chekov's 110 percent theoretical physics tests crinkling under it."So you figured the only way to deal with that was to bite me," he says, and his voice is low, dangerous, and raspy from too much winter air.  

 

Jim glares at him, hands curled into fists on the edge of the counter that's still dug into the small of his back, and Leo wants to shake him out of his relaxed perch."It was the best way - "

 

Leo dives forward into his space again, weight thrown off kilter with the twisted ankle, and he ends up mostly leaning against Jim at the same time he's trying his damndest not to throttle him.Jim takes his weight, doesn't shove him off again even as Leo sways in close and barks, "Damnit, keep your teeth to yourself - "

 

"Dr. McCoy."Spock's voice is a sharp crackle of ice over the fire in the room."If you would release the alpha, and let me see to your wounds, I am sure we would all be relieved."

 

Leo lets go of Jim, but he stays in his space for a long moment more, swaying unsteadily on his foot, eyes locked with Jim's.He pushes away from him before he can get too deep in the concentrated brilliance of a clear sky, and Spock slips under Leo's arm to support him.  

 

They end up in the biggest bathroom, which is the one downstairs with a floor that slopes down towards a central drain, would have the whole pack arrested as serial killers if ever a self-respecting law-fearing citizen found their way in here.It's never been Leo's blood on those stained yellow tiles before, but as Spock cleans Jim's bite on his shoulder he supposes there's a first time for everything, unfortunately.  

 

Spock works very efficiently, which is probably the only way that Spock knows how to work, the only way he was ever taught by that sociopath father of his.He tapes a square of gauze over Leo's disinfected wound, goes back for the roll for extra protection, and then replaces everything in the first aid kit and turns his x-ray gaze to Leo."You will not turn," he says, matter-of-fact."The moon is not full."

 

Leo would never admit it, but Spock's words do a great deal to ease some of the stress on his mind.He fails to bite back a grimace, and says, "Like you would know.The amount of wolfsbane you ingest a month, it's a wonder your wolf can tell night and day.Hell, it's a wonder you don't kill Nyota, swapping spit all the time - "

 

"I inject the wolfsbane, Dr. McCoy, I do not eat it, and my preference to remain in my human form has no effect on my knowledge of the lunar cycle."  

 

Leo snorts.Spock doesn't twitch so much as a face muscle, the cut of his cheekbones severe in the overhead fluorescent light, from the angle Leo has from his seat on the edge of the bathtub."Jim would do anything to protect his pack, Dr. McCoy," Spock says."You are his pack.You will quickly become acclimated to the fact."

 

Back in his apartment above the veterinary clinic, after Gaila has dropped him off with promises to recover his truck, lying in bed with his ankle elevated, Leo realizes that that was Spock's way of telling him to get used to it.

 

II.

 

Werewolves are a very tactile species, but of the whole pack, Gaila is definitely the most inclined towards touching - touching people's skin, grabbing their clothes, running her hands through people's hair.For the longest time after that first rainy summer night when all eight members of the pack had crammed into Leo's waiting room, Leo had thought she was Jim's mate, with all the touching they did.He realized pretty quickly after the pack swallowed him whole that she's like that with all the unmated wolves, not just Jim but Scotty and Carol too, and eventually Leo, once he was around long enough to look comfortable on the couch in the pack house.

 

After all this time, Leo still isn't quite used to it, to the ease with which Gaila will walk into a room and drop herself in his lap, smiling with that green spark in her eye like the weird emerald sheen of her wolf's coat.She shimmies down and leans back into him, head nestled on his shoulder to watch the old sci-fi movie that's running on the room's flatscreen television.

 

"What're we watching?" she murmurs, close to his ear, and it's just because Leo's only had eyes for one person for a long time that the tickle of her curly orange hair on the side of his face, her ass on his crotch, and her shapely legs stretched out on the couch do absolutely nothing for him.  

 

He re-adjusts himself so he's reclining at a better angle to account for her weight, and answers quietly, so Nyota doesn't shush him like she keeps doing to Sulu and Chekov, curled up in their own armchair."Star Trek.The one with the whales."There's Chinese takeout, or at least the remains of it, the scraps left afer being plowed through by a pack of werewolves, on the coffee table, but Leo puts his feet up anyways.

 

Which, of course, is the moment Jim slinks into the room, taps a knuckle on the door frame even though every one of his betas has already perked up at his entrance, and says, "Bones, can I talk to you?"  

 

Leo hefts Gaila off his lap and onto the couch cushion next to him, where she bounces so she's half sprawled over Carol, who just curls protectively around her popcorn when Gaila reaches for it.Leo levels himself up, and he notices Spock watching him warily from across the room, Nyota sitting primly against his side, her normal human senses not attune to the fact that anything apparently off has gone on.  

 

Leo follows Jim out into the darkened hallway, pulling his loose pants back up over his hips.The light from the kitchen at the end of the hall is the only light, and Jim might not need more than that, but Leo does, so he can hardly be blamed for walking right into Jim's back when he stops in front of the staircase to the second storey.  

 

Jim catches him fast around the waist, but it's not to steady him, because that would be normal, and courteous, and those are two things Jim Kirk usually is not.Instead, Jim presses him back into the stairs, his weight slanted against Leo's front so that Leo's back is pressing into the edges of the steps, and Jim is where else but straddling his lap, head tucked into Leo's shoulder.  

 

Leo's arms come up to wrap around Jim's back of their own accord, palms skimming the flannel of his shirt.Jim breathes in deep against his neck, a rush of warm air that mirrors the heat pooling in Leo's gut, and if he's not careful he's going to make this real awkward real fast, because there's Jim's fingers under the hem of his shirt, on the taut skin above the waist of his pants, and there's Jim's wild golden hair tickling Leo's jaw, and it's sensory overload, the feel of him and the familiar blood and earth smell of him.

 

He exhales in a long stream, Jim sinking into his chest, the stairs digging into his back."Whatcha doing, Jim?" he asks, softly, even though it won't matter, because every wolf in the other room will be hearing every moment of this.

 

"Just shush, Bones," Jim murmurs, and Leo feels it more as a vibration than hears it, and it sends a feeling shuddering through his chest that makes his lips part against the top of Jim's hair, makes him want to curl up around Jim in a nest of blankets and pillows, which is just ridiculous.

 

Jim's rubbing his face back and forth over Leo's shoulder, nose nuzzled into the crook of Leo's neck, and he can't do anything but stay goddamn still and resist the inclination to nuzzle back.He's sure Jim can hear his heart making a racket in his chest, when it's the only sound in the hall except for their breathing and the muffled phaser blast sounds from the movie in the den.  

 

It's a few long minutes before Jim clambers off him.He pulls Leo up as he goes, with such momentum that they almost go stumbling right back into the other wall of the hallway.Leo's shirt is askew, but Jim goes ahead and straightens it for him, fingers brushing his abdomen again, and Leo's stomach swoops under his light touch.

 

"Good talk, Bones," Jim says.

 

Leo screws his face up in the best imitation he can make of frustration."Damnit, Jim," he grouses, "I'm a doctor, not a body pillow." 

 

Jim flashes a smile, teeth glinting in the dim light."Actually, Bones, you're a vet."

 

Leo feels his eyebrows furrow, now of their own accord."I'm a traditionally trained surgeon, Jim.I sew you idiots up all the time, usually when you're human - "

 

"We're only kind of human," Jim is having way too much fun with this.Leo knows he's only feeding the fire, but he's been feeding the fire for years, now, so there's not use trying to backpedal.He's got a witty comeback all lined up, but Jim's already walking back into the den, and Leo's eyes are drawn to the soft curve of Jim's ass in his sweatpants, which really can't bode well at all.

 

He follows him from a distance.As he enters the room, the eyes of every beta in the place - Chekov and Sulu necking like teenagers, Carol and Gaila doing their dance with the popcorn, Spock sitting stiffly on a beanbag chair, and Scotty on the floor in front of the television reassembling the remote to control the microwave, or some such shit - turn to him like he's a strobe light.Gaila wrinkles her nose, shifts away from him on the couch when he sits down, and doesn't reprise her old seat in his lap.

 

III.

 

"How are you drunk right now?" Leo asks, dropping himself onto the barstool next to Jim.Jim's slumped forward on his folded arms, drooling a little onto the bar, a bottle of cheap beer in his hand, wearing a god awful, knobbly sweater that Leo is pretty sure Scotty's weird little friend Keenser sent him last Christmas."Aren't you werewolves supposed to be immune to alcohol, or something?"

 

Jim smiles lopsidedly up at him, and Leo gets a starburst of affection that makes him want to ruffle Jim's hair, maybe press a kiss to his clumsy lips."Wolfsbane," he says, in a tone that makes Leo think Jim thinks he's whispering, not slurring so loud that the whole bar can probably hear them."Add a little dash, pretty good buzz."

 

Leo's cell phone buzzes in the pocket of his leather jacket, but he ignores it - it's probably the pack again, checking to make sure he got their first text, which he didn't reply to either - the one that read, "tenth anniversary of crash. he'll be at the enterprise pub."He flags the bartender down for a scotch, because Bones can hold a damn drink, and misery loves company anyways.

 

"You raid Spock's stash?" he asks, and Jim just splits into giggles in response, smile curved around the mouth of his beer bottle."That hobgoblin will come at you."

 

Jim shakes his head.Leo's scotch arrives, and he does it in onegulp, which only makes Jim's grin wider."Spock's m- " he hiccups."I'm the alpha," he amends."So, Spock's stuff is my stuff."

 

Leo chuckles."Yeah, I'm sure Spock would love to hear that.You know, with how he's really embraced the whole wolf pack dynamic."Jim doesn't reply to that, instead polishes off his beer, then strikes the bartop with his fist to summon another round.

 

"Bones," Jim says, once the round has arrived, "you know, when I was a kid - " he still is a kid, Jesus, with the weight of the world on his shoulders and a million lifetimes in his eyes - "my favorite card game was BS.It's weird, I know, werewolf family, but when you can tell whenever other people are lying, you get really good at controlling your heartbeat."He makes a face, muses, "Like, otherwise, we'd know everything about each other, and that would suck, having Spock know when I was turned on, how weird would that be - "

 

He shakes his head like a dog trying to rid its ears of water, cheeks loose and flapping."Anyways," he drops a pinch of dried wolfsbane plant into his beer, and takes a swig, "my point is, let's play BS." 

 

Jim looks young, wide-eyed, and his face is more open than Leo's seen it on any other day of the year, ever.There's a reason, he thinks, that Jim only ever lets one person be with him on the anniversary of his family's death, Sulu for all those years from highschool and now Leo, because he's stripped bare, and he can't afford that, being the alpha."Sure, Jimbo," Leo says.He'd probably say yes to anything, right now."Grab some cards."

 

Jim hops off his barstool and dashes off into the back of the pub, still nimble on his feet like he is in his wolf form, which is a funny combination with "drunk idiot."He doesn't come back, though.

 

It's not ten o'clock yet, but Leo doesn't know why he expects Jim's fist fighting tendencies to operate on any sort of regular cycle.Especially because the pub's resident asshole, Cupcake, is bent over the ping pong table over in front of the game cabinet, where all the playing cards are.

 

Leo hears some raised, indignant voices, and the sound of a chair splintering, probably over Jim's back, and he sighs.He was hoping he could get Jim to the point where drunk turned into sleepy and clingy, pile him into his pickup truck and take him back to his apartment, dump Jim into bed and wait vigil at his side for when the nightmares came, inevitably.Instead, he finds himself heaving up off his stool, his weary feet on autopilot as he makes his way through the tables to the back.

 

He gets there just in time to take one of Jim's elbows to the face. 

 

Jim doesn't even notice, just continues on whaling on anyone who comes at him, taking his fair share of hits in return, and maybe Leo shouldn't have drank so much, if he's going to be patching them both up with whatever odds and ends are in the pub bathroom and the glove compartment of Leo's truck.  

 

Leo intercepts Cupcake on his way to Jim's unprotected back and slams him into the game cabinet, not as hard as he might like, but Cupcake is significantly larger than him, so.He knees the giant man in the solar plexus a couple of times and then shoves him off to the side, so he slumps to the ground, gurgling.

 

"Bones!" Jim shouts gleefully, right before someone grabs him around the head and pulls him back down. 

 

"Damnit, Jim," Leo grumbles.He can already feel his nose swelling, bleeding, his eyes going bruised around the edges, and it's going to be a hell of a thing to explain away to his assistant Chapel on Monday morning.Nonetheless, he forces his way back into the fray, pulls the guy off of Jim, and slams him into the pool table.

 

***

 

"Bones, Bones, Bones," Jim is sing-songing.He's draped around Leo's neck, his legs only sort of supporting his weight, staggering, the carpet in Leo's entry hallway bunching up around his feet.The warm orange light of the hall lamp makes him seem redder in the face than he probably is, but still his hair is practically a halo around his head, especially with the way Leo's vision is blurring, what with the alcohol and the black eyes and all.  

 

"I love ya, Bones.You can really throw a punch."He pats Leo's face sloppily, and Leo pulls off an impressive feat of balance while keeping Jim upright and kicking the door closed behind him."Howdja get a black eye, though?"

 

Leo deposits Jim on his bed - it's a studio apartment, big enough for one person and not much else, except the stack of medical journals on the kitchen counter, which doubles as a desk."Your flailing octopus limbs, that's how," he grumbles quietly."Really, you fight much better as a wolf."

 

Jim's already snuggling back into the pile of pillows at the top of Leo's bed.He usually only sleeps with one, but he grabbed the extras out of the closet this afternoon, when he'd looked up from doggie doctor appointments long enough to see the date."It's a good thing about the wolfsbane," Jim mumbles."Woulda shifted.Instinct."

 

Leo's face is throbbing, and it's late, and that's his bed that Jim's in, loose-limbed and frumpy in that sweater that smells like pack and inviting as hell, so he turns off the lights and flops into bed next to him.  

 

Jim latches onto him almost immediately, and Leo melts into him like the easiest thing in the world, his forehead resting on the ridge of Jim's brow, legs tangled up in the sheets and Jim's still got his shoes on but Leo kicks them off for him, snakes an arm around Jim's middle and just relaxes into it.Jim makes his high keening sound, short and light, his face pressed down into the pillows, and Leo's going to have a hell of a shiner in the morning but damn if that noise doesn't make his heart skip.

 

IV.

 

It says something big about what kind of life Leo has come to live that he thinks of cracked ribs - four, by the feel of them - as negligible injuries.Them, and the gash on his forehead, the place where he pulled a stick out of his ankle, they're all negligible, because he's not concussed and the stick thing scabbed over fine, doesn't look infected because he emptied the contents of his flask over it, and he's not in danger of laughing any time soon, so the ribs are fine.

 

It says something else about his character, something he doesn't want to examine too closely, that he's looking around the basement of the old ranger's station in the preserve, level headed, thinking that he can probably leverage himself out of the high, tiny window above his head if he steps up on the pipe that he's handcuffed to - which, another problem entirely, with two solutions, one of which involves disloclocating his thumb, the other of which would take more time than he's willing to risk, with the hunters coming back every few minutes.

 

It's a lose-lose scenario, as Leo sees it.He's trying to think like Jim, think as if he doesn't believe in no-win scenarios, but there's a storm raging outside and he's not sure he could walk on the ankle if he tried, even though it's negligible, and he's been here for something like two days, given the beard the German hunter is sporting.And he dreamed of Jim last night, lying cold and uncomfortable with his back to the wall, Jim smiling on the porch to the pack house on a warm autumn day, face speckled with sunlight through the leaves, maybe a little bit older and softer than Leo's ever seen him, edges blended.

 

Leo thinks it's approaching night again now, but there's a storm raging in the forest outside the tiny window, the sky cast over with dark clouds, and so he can't tell the time of day by anything except the temperature in the basement - which is cold, and dank.His head is bleeding again, sluggishly into his hairline, but he's more worried about his dry mouth and empty stomach, the black starting to fuzz the edges of his vision.

 

It says a lot about who Leo has come to call his family that howling and gunshots on the ends of his hearing can so ease his mind.He slumps back against the wall, his head against the pipe, and closes his eyes.

 

***

 

When he opens them again, it's to Chapel's very direct, always admonishing gaze.She's holding a large syringe in a manner that suggests a threat without being openly threatening, and Leo wonders if he's too far awake to feign sleep again."You should have told me you were running around with werewolves, Dr. McCoy," Chapel says.

 

Leo tries to sigh, but that just hurts his ribs, and it's not worth it.Chapel doesn't need any indications as to his vexation, anyways - hours in an operating room together will do that to people."Would you have believed me if I did?" he asks.His voice is raspy from disuse, feels like sandpaper on the back of his throat, but Chapel's not rushing to get him a glass of water.

 

"No," she says, honestly."I would have carted you off to a mental institution.But that's beside the point."She sets the syringe back down on the cart, and Leo relaxes considerably.Even in a mini skirt and turtleneck sweater, apron smeared with blood and thrown on haphazard, hair done up like she just got called off of a date, Chapel is a force to be reckoned with."I mean, werewolves, Len?"

 

"You know," Leo drawls, "despite what seems to be popular belief, it isn't your job to run my life for me. You don't have to be in charge of every detail all the time.I can handle myself."

 

She quirks an eyebrow at him, sprawled out on his own examining table with his torso icing, head stitched, and ankle wrapped, and he thinks she may have a point."No you can't," Chapel says."Besides, someone has to run your life, after all, and you're not going to do it, so."

 

Leo closes his eyes against the harsh fluorescent light and tries to relax back into the cold, hard surface of the table."Where's Jim?" he asks, gentler than before.  

 

There's a pause before Chapel answers."He's outside.Talking to Carol.Her - " she cuts off.Leo opens his eyes to look at her, and her gaze is wavering, watery."Her father was leading the men who took you.Hunters, Nyota called them.Jim killed him, I'm pretty sure."

 

"Christ," Leo swears.What's good is - good is a wholly relative term, but - what's good is, just about everyone in Jim's pack has lost their family, has been cast out, kicked to the curb at three in the morning because Jocelyn just couldn't take it any more, she could hear your goddamn snark even in your sleep.  

 

He hears Chapel say quietly, "Yeah," and then, "Hey, Jim.He's awake."

 

Leo opens his eyes yet again to find Jim sinking into the chair wedged in between the wall and the operating table, Chapel disappearing out the door to the clinic.He looks tired, and Leo catches himself wanting to reach out and smooth the creases from Jim's forehead, even as the bone-deep exhaustion in his limbs is whispering in his ear that he should crawl into the chair with Jim, burrow into the spaces around him and sleep for days.

 

Jim's gaze is half-lidded, more physical signs of weariness than most wolves will ever display."You're never allowed to go anywhere ever again, Bones," he says, his voice flat, stifled."Your affinity for getting yourself snatched is fucking ridiculous - "

 

"Maybe if the pack would stop making so many goddamn 'mortal' enemies, we wouldn't have to worry about - "

 

Jim surges up out of his seat, and his mouth is on Leo's before his slow human senses even realize what's happening.It's a burst of heat, of color, the manifestation of a million moments and emotions in one, and it's too hard to be called a kiss, lacks finesse, but Jim's fingers are careful around the bandages on Leo's head, tight in the shirt over his shoulder, and Leo moans, low and thready.  

 

His hands are in Jim's hair, and Jim is a careful weight against his chest, mindful of his broken ribs, but moving forward like he wants to move through Leo, into him.Leo's hands move down Jim's back, over the ridge of his spine and the mountain of his shoulders, the dip to the nape of his neck, and he squeezes gently, because he knows Jim's sensitive there, knows massaging the scruff of his neck makes him keen - 

 

Jim pulls off, but his lips latch almost immediately onto Leo's throat, skimming over the scruff to soothe kisses into his pulse point.Leo's heart batters against his ribs like it's vying for freedom, but it's worth it a hundred percent, worth it to have Jim's wet mouth sucking a bruise on the underside of his jaw and Jim's thigh pressing between his legs and Jim, just Jim, all of him -  

 

"Mine," Jim's murmuring, a rumble into the side of Leo's throat, his teeth bared flat against his skin."You're mine, Bones, I'm not going to let anything - "

 

V.

 

The pale predawn sunlight filtered in through the blinds drawn over the bedroom windows makes Jim's eyes soft, casts a penumbra around him.His mouth hangs open just slightly, pulled at one corner into a smile, and his skin is hot under Leo's lips, too hot for a human, a heady fever that hangs the sleepy atmosphere around their unmade bed, his muscles liquid pliance under Leo's fingers. 

 

Leo's sunk into him, his weight between Jim's bent legs, Jim's hands in his hair and Jim's dick hard against Leo's coiled stomach through the silk of his briefs, and Leo just might come in his boxers if Jim doesn't cut out making those sounds, the punchy moans that make Leo's thoughts fuzz out.His hands slide around slowly to the small of Jim's back, fingers skimming the dimples above his ass, and he opens his mouth over Jim's hip, tonguing at the sharp jut of the bone.Jim breathes in deep like he's about to go underwater, his hips straining away from the mattress to press up into Leo's weight.

 

"Fuck, Bones," Jim whines.His head's thrown back, throat bared, and Leo knows how big that is, and it shakes him down the the core, makes him hiss, " _Jim_ ," into his skin.  

 

Jim twists under him, his hands leaving Leo's hair, to tangle in the sheets bunched around him, one thumb nudging at the waistband of his black briefs.Leo skims his lips over the waistband, feather-light, stills Jim's hands, then drops down to nuzzle the base of Jim's dick, the thick musk scent of him overwhelming.Jim makes a sound like he's dying, like he's toeing the edge of a cliff and Leo's about to push him over into the drink - 

 

Leo hooks the tips of his fingers under Jim's boxers and pulls them down, just far enough to free the head of Jim's dick.He bends down slowly, and Jim's thighs quiver against his sides as he presses a closed kiss to the underside of him, his lower lip catching on the waistband of his briefs as he pulls away.Jim makes a high-pitched, breathy noise at the loss, and looks up at Leo like he's been done a great personal wrong - 

 

"Flip over," Leo murmurs.  

 

Jim kicks his underwear off, down into the tangle of fabric at the end of the bed, where Leo's scrubs have met their timely demise, and lays back on his elbows.He's stunning, shell-shocking, lithe and gorgeous and weathered, covered in tiny scars and sun damage, always in motion, laid out bare before him, and Leo wants to destroy him, wants to hear him come, yell and _howl_ - 

 

"Bones," Jim prompts, his feet nudging Leo's knees.  

 

Leo grabs him by the ankle, raises his leg to gentle a kiss on the inside of his knee, then further up the inside of his thigh, the ropy muscle jumping under his lips."Flip over," he repeats, quietly, and sets Jim's leg down.

 

Jim flips, laying waste to what little order the bedsheets still had left, his face pressing into Leo's pillow, still indented from sleep.Leo runs his eyes over the beautifully sculpted expanse of Jim's back, and they trip, as they always do, on the small line of black letters just above the swell of Jim's ass.  

 

" _Bones_ ," Jim moans.Leo's eyes are transfixed by his hips as he rolls them shamelessly against the mattress, rutting for friction, and his brain whites out for a second.

 

He melts down on top of him, weight slightly off to one side, bare chest flush to Jim's back.He presses open-mouthed kisses to Jim's spine, drags his lips from vertebra to vertebra and feels Jim move underneath him with each kiss, arching and twisting, malleable here when he is unflinching in everything else.  

 

Leo flattens his tongue over the last raised vertebra, Jim's skin salty on his tongue, and Jim huffs like he's hair the air knocked out of him, "Fuck, Bones, come on."Leo smiles against the small of his back, squeezes him by the hips, and nips gently at the taut skin just above the cleft of his ass.Jim makes a breathy, aborted sound, that catches at the back of his throat.

 

With one hand, Leo reaches behind him, scrabbles in the messy sheets, and finds a bottle of lube, and squeezes some out onto his fingers, cool and slick.A hand splayed on the small of Jim's back, holding him in place, Leo sucks short kisses into his ass cheek, bites with his blunt human teeth at the soft flesh, until Jim a quibbering mess against his pillow.Two fingers slide in without preamble, and Jim presses back into them, hips lifting away from the mattress.

 

Jim's already halfway gone, no longer coherent as Leo crooks his fingers and twists, drawing a thready whimper from him, that makes Leo's dick twitch hard in his boxers, makes him suck in a breath against Jim's ass.He does it again, and Jim bucks back into his fingers, then down into the mattress as his fingers withdraw, grinding his dick into the sheets for friction, and goddamn it if Jim Kirk utterly taken apart isn't the sexiest thing in the universe - 

 

Jim comes quick, and Leo soothes him through it, fingers moving slowly against his prostate, until Jim is boneless underneath him, slack and panting into the sweaty sheets.Then he pulls his fingers out gently and kisses back up Jim's spine, careful with every vertebra, and he's too far wrecked to even rattle off the names of each in his head as he goes, which he can do in his sleep, usually.

 

Leo kicks out of his own boxers, and buries his face in the back of Jim's neck, where it slopes into his shoulder.Jim turns sleepily, grabs Leo by the ear and kisses him, his lips lax and clumsy, opening under Leo, pushing his hips back so his ass presses against Leo's dick, firm.Leo rocks into him, and he's too close for anything but the slick slide of skin against skin, so he sinks as far as he can into Jim and just _feels_ him - 

 

***

 

"What is it?" Leo asks, some time later, when they're curled towards each other like half moons, the fire of a collapsing nebula cooling between them, "your tattoo."

 

Jim's eyes are closed, but Leo can see him stiffen, can see the twitch of his eyelids as he hears the question, but it's out, he can't take it back, now.Instead, he reaces out for one of Jim's hands, tangles their fingers together and tugs it to his chest, presses a kiss to Jim's knuckles.

 

"We never really had a pack symbol," Jim starts, eyes still closed."Most have something - some pendant, or tattoo, or whatever, that connects them all.We didn't.I had the tattoo already, and one day Gaila saw it, and said, why don't we make that out pack symbol? So.We did."

 

Leo tries to stop himself from asking, but he can't."What's it mean? NCC-1701?"

 

Jim sounds pained when he answers."It was the license plate number on my mom's car," he says, very quietly."The one she and Sam were in, that day."

 

Leo goes to pull Jim into him, but before he can Jim's up and out of the bed, moving about the room.Leo sits up abruptly, afraid he's set something off, here, but Jim just rummages around on the room's impossibly cluttered desk, the one piled with calligraphy on ancient parchment paper and new-printed medical journals, and comes back with a black-capped marker.

 

He crawls over the mess of fabric at the end of the bed, and straddles Leo's lap.He takes Leo's arm by the elbow, pops the cap off the marker with his teeth, and writes on Leo's skin, in small block letters, _NCC-1701_.When he's done, he caps the marker, and throws it haphazardly back towards the desk.His gaze is raw, open, and Leo feels like, for once, he can see straight through the bullshit smiles and the maze of a life history to his soul.

 

"There," Jim says, just loud enough to carry across their shared space."A temporary one.Until you're ready."

 

+1.

 

Jim's got no shame, Leo has come to realize.

 

Especially where the pack is concerned - Jim's up to make breakfast this morning, he's doing scrambled eggs and bacon, with a side order of singing and dance.He's humming cheerily at the stove, back turned to the kitchen table, where the whole pack has piled into the table space meant for four people, bickering over orange juice and coffee.

 

Leo watches the scene from the door to the kitchen, leaning with his shoulder against the doorjamb.He feels his mouth pull up at the corner, involuntarily, because all Jim's wearing - shameless - is a pair of blue underpants that Leo got him for his last birthday, with bright, small red letters emblazoned across the back - 

 

_Property of Dr. Leonard McCoy, MD, PhD, DVM, Psy.D, DN._

 

Jim shimmies, flips the scrambled eggs, and winks at Leo over his shoulder, over Gaila yanking Sulu's ear and Chekov and Scotty bent over a theoretical physics textbook, Carol asleep in the middle of the fray, Nyota and Spock arguing over the crossword puzzle.  

 

Leo feels his face break into a smile.

 


End file.
